Caught through an interstice
by crackinthecup
Summary: Finrod and Bëor enjoy some quality time together at some indefinite point after Bëor's arrival in Nargothrond.


**A/N:** Title teased out of a poem by Walt Whitman.

* * *

"This feels strange." Bëor was looking outward across the great hall from his seat at Finrod's right, and dozens of pairs of impossibly bright eyes blinked back at him. He smoothed his hands down the garnet robes Finrod had plopped into his arms before retreating out of the room as half-formed protests clamored on his lips, and against velvet and delicate veins of golden thread, his rough, sun-browned skin seemed incongruous. Incongruous and uncomfortable, he decided as he made to shift only to have the robes snag and tangle.

He turned to glare at Finrod, and had to squint as his eyes took in the golden circlet glinting like a lost ray of sunlight and the gemstones rippling at his throat. "_You_ look strange, all spruced up like that. Is your kind incapable of wearing anything normal?"

Finrod laughed a tinkling laugh and swiveled in his seat to face him. "Do you find my apparel ill befitting?"

Bëor downed his glass of wine with a shake of the head and a muttered comment about _elves_. It was sweet and fragrant, so unlike the ales they had used to brew by fermenting fruits in splintering, shoddy casks long ago in Estolad. Heat sizzled beneath his skin, and he swallowed the last gulps of wine. "You'd look better wearing nothing at all, m'lord," he declared finally, so loud that at the nearest table cheeks stained pink and hasty hands smothered giggles.

Finrod stretched his left arm over the table, tapping a tattoo into the wood with his fingers. For trickling moments he seemed to truly consider the statement. "I have always found it … liberating," he mused, the same staccato rhythm. "Ease of movement, nothing to tangle in the underbrush during walks in the woods, a deterrent to company one would not wish to entertain." He smiled at that. "And it truly is fascinating how much one can bear witness to when there are no swishing robes to announce one's presence. Once I came across a most rare species of owl—"

"Are you going to finish that?" Bëor jerked his head toward the half-full goblet of wine perched in Finrod's other hand. The tabletop beat stopped.

"Not at all." Bëor reached over and plucked the glass out of Finrod's fingers, brushing skin against skin, and quaffed of it deeply, too fast.

A dreamy smile blossomed on Finrod's lips. "I think the party is over."

Bëor gave a grunt. The courtiers had not yet begun to disperse. "It's early yet."

"It is," Finrod replied, smile widening. And he rose gracefully, all dripping robes and long limbs, only to hover by Bëor's chair, hands folded on the carven wooden back.

More clumsily, more heavily than Finrod, Bëor stood up and followed him out of the hall. Stragglers parted with words of greeting as they wove their way through Nargothrond's stony labyrinth of corridors. It was not to Bëor's quarters they were headed.

Finrod's chambers were grand, decked out in magnificence. Rich carpets, hand-woven, made plush the stone floor, birch furniture was pale and delicate, exquisite as firelight licked the tremble of shadows across it. Bëor saw none of it.

Scarcely had the door clicked shut behind him when Finrod pulled him into a kiss. He felt fabric undulating beneath his hands, and tiny clasp by infuriating tiny clasp he worked Finrod's robes open.

"Does your kind also have a preference for impracticality?" Bëor grumbled as he pulled at the last clasp, as finally his fingers found skin.

"Not particularly," Finrod replied, voice a touch distracted, a touch breathless, "but we are not as impatient as men."

"Impatient, eh?" Bëor's lips wandered, ticklish across Finrod's jaw, down his neck, brushing the cool metal of the Nauglamír; and though Finrod was now bare, despite his own words at the table, here in the half-light of Finrod's chambers the gold glinted and the jewels sparkled so vivaciously, so fluidly, so much like their bearer, that Bëor did not remove the necklace. Finrod squirmed, tipping his head back, baring his neck to Bëor's attentions with a small noise of contentment that transmuted into a gasp as Bëor's fingers plunged downward, light against his length. "Who's impatient now?"

He steered Finrod further into the room with lips, and hands, and teasing little touches that left color splotched high on Finrod's cheeks. Finrod gave a breathless, gleeful ripple of laughter as Bëor pushed him down atop the bedclothes, and he wrapped his arms around Bëor's shoulders, pulling him down, insistent.

"Balan—" he gasped, spreading his legs, rocking against Bëor's clothed erection.

"Don't call me that," Bëor growled, nipping at Finrod's neck, propping himself up on his elbows to level Finrod with a half-indulgent glare.

"It is your name," Finrod murmured with a brush of gentle knuckles over Bëor's stubble-dotted cheek.

A kiss, into silence. "No longer, is it? I'm your vassal now."

"Bëor …" Finrod rolled out the syllables, tasting them almost, and at the look on Bëor's face, he grinned, pressing his smile to the corner of Bëor's mouth. He tilted his hips, aching flesh against the cool sweep of stately robes, against the hardness beneath, and Bëor leaned his forehead against Finrod's with a groan rumbling low in his throat.

"Do you find it ill befitting?"

A snort bubbled upon Finrod's lips. He slipped his hands to the front of Bëor's robes, and his long fingers were deft about the fastenings, and pleasantly cool when they traced the bare skin beneath. Over nipples that stiffened at Finrod's teasing, lodging Bëor's breath in his throat, making his hips snap forward. Bëor kissed him again, roughly, this time with the sting of teeth and a swipe of the tongue that did nothing to soothe. Finrod sighed, half-wanting Bëor's teeth on his neck instead, and his nails scored reddened furrows into Bëor's upper arms.

"Impatient," Bëor tsked again, shifting lower, pressing a kiss to the center of Finrod's chest, and the prickle of his stubble made Finrod writhe in delicious delight. Lower still, over the quiver of muscles in his abdomen, down the ticklish skin of his stomach.

"You do me – _ah_ – a disservice."

One hand skimmed down to part his thighs. With a flutter of eyelashes Finrod let his eyes slip shut. His fingers twisted in Bëor's gray-streaked hair as Bëor parted his lips for him, tongue darting out over his glistening tip. Slowly Bëor took him down further, and Finrod canted his hips, pressing himself deeper into the heat of his mouth. A loud moan quavered in the air as Bëor's cheeks hollowed, as his tongue dragged across the veins swelling his length.

And when Bëor pulled off with a wet pop, almost a whine was wrenched from him. Would have been but for Bëor sitting back on his haunches, eyes flickering to the bedside table, brows knotting in bemusement. Finrod twisted to the side, reaching out for the drawer, extracting a stoppered vial of oil.

Bëor chuckled with a fond shake of the head. He grinned a roguish grin as Finrod handed him the vial. "Typical," he snorted, uncorking it, pouring a liberal amount of oil onto his fingers.

"I would not wish to disappoint you." Finrod's breath had quickened. He shifted his hips, splayed himself wider.

"Are all elves so demanding?" Bëor stooped to plant a tender kiss on the very tip of Finrod's length. "Or is it just you?" His fingers were gentle as they probed at Finrod's entrance, as they nudged past the tight ring of muscle, and Finrod gasped, he bucked his hips, crimson spattered onto his cheeks.

"Asking questions," Finrod choked out, "is my province. And I am sure I do not know what you mean."

"Yes, yes," Bëor groused, curling his fingers. "With you it's always, 'Have you ever counted the minutes?'" He skated his free hand inward over his pelvis, taking his own leaking cock in hand and sliding his fingers upward, experimentally. "'Have you—'"

"_Elbereth_, you know what that does to me," Finrod panted, watching the lazy flicks of Bëor's wrist with half-lidded eyes.

"Her again?" Bëor growled, but he offered Finrod a smirk, dipping his thumb over his own tip. His fingers slipped in and out of Finrod, with ease now, and as they brushed against that exquisite bundle of nerves within him, a moan stuttered past Finrod's lips.

"Fuck," Bëor muttered, eyes trained on Finrod's face.

Blue-green eyes fixed on him. "Please do."

Fingers withdrew. Bëor upended the vial over his palm and lathered it thick over his own arousal. Briefly he closed his eyes, gave a small thrust into his own half-closed fist, and heard Finrod groan at the sight.

Bëor settled back between Finrod's spread thighs, hitching his right leg up around his waist as he went. Finrod's hands clenched, rumpling the bedcovers, bottom lip drawn between his teeth, as Bëor's slick length prodded at his entrance.

Finrod gave a little roll of the hips, gasping as one of Bëor's hands wrapped around his neck and the jewels glistering there and _squeezed_.

"_Please_—"

With a groan Bëor sheathed himself within him, and Finrod inhaled through his nose, sharply. He closed his eyes, breathing labored, as Bëor withdrew only to sink in deeper as Finrod adjusted.

"My lord …"

A frown. "My name …" The words wriggled out through the press of Bëor's fingers. "Oh _yes_ – say my name."

Bëor's thrusts changed, his rhythm waxed erratic, harsher, and he snaked his free hand between their joined bodies to wrap around Finrod's length, earning a buck of the hips, a tightening of muscles that seemed to ignite the roiling pleasure at the base of his stomach.

"Findaráto," he said, low and husky, and was answered with a shuddering moan.

Finrod shifted, he _whined_, as he lurched toward the brink, and Bëor could feel the hum of his vocal cords above the cool metal of the carcanet. The fingers held around Finrod's neck flexed, tightening, and Finrod sucked in a trembling intake of air that almost ended on a cough. Bëor scraped his hand all the faster up Finrod's cock, and with a scream that lingered in the dark corners of the room Finrod came, seed coating Bëor's fingers, sticking to the sweaty flesh of his abdomen.

Bëor was near rutting against him now in the fervid ecstasy just before his own climax. And when he too overshot his peak, finally slumping on top of Finrod, it was with his name muted against the crook of his neck.

"Eru," Finrod sighed, and stretched in sated bliss. Bëor's heavy breath ruffled the thick golden ropes of Finrod's hair, lips pressed in a kiss against Finrod's temple.

"Hmm, what's that?"

"Nothing."

Bëor rolled to the side and slung an arm over Finrod's waist, dragging him across the sheets until he nuzzled against his chest. "Go to sleep," he muttered, and Finrod smiled.


End file.
